As you know in our day job at Dinosaur PR we are constantly running campaigns for clients that are targeting different audiences, sometimes these can be pretty dry and other times they can be very interesting. We are currently running a blogger outreach campaign for our client Storage Options as they have just launched a new product for cyclists and mountain bikers. It’s called BikeCam and it films from the helmet or handlebars – it’s a great little product and so we wanted ...

Last Thursday, I spent the evening presenting on social media in the finance sector to a room of delegates at Grant Thornton. When I present I prefer to use real life case studies of work that I have completed myself with my teams. However, when I came to the Q&A section I was asked a question which I found quite difficult to answer. They said: “I can see all of the benefits of running integrated campaigns in social media but what are the downsides to using social media?” I really struggled with this (granted I was stood up in front of about 60 delegates so I was on the spot a bit) so I thought for a while. And all ...

With all the hype during the last six or seven years around the explosion of social networking you could be led to believe that social media influencers drive everything and are going to take over the world now. You may also have been convinced that the day of the traditional media sources and good quality investigative journalism are over. Not so – it’s true social media is important and that we all tend to use different channels to share different things. For instance, hands up who hasn’t logged into Quora or Google+ in the last few days? Yes I can hear a few of you sheepishly hiding your  heads in shame – is that because 90% of the ...

Are you busy tomorrow? If not, you might want to make your way over to the Adelphi on Hunslet Road as I am speaking at a free seminar on the benefits of using social media for business. It’s the second of four seminars to be held by the organisers of this year’s Leeds Digital Festival. I attended the launch of the Festival’s new identity last week that I wrote about on Dinosaur PR’s blog. The Yorkshire Evening Post covered the event the other day. It is kind of a Q&A session with some of the leading lights on social media in the region and we will be debating some of the hot topics on this ...

So last week I attended a meeting down in Kent with a very senior SEO expert (who shall remain nameless) but who runs a large digital team. He called me and my colleagues in to discuss the possibility of helping them create some interesting and engaging online campaigns. I am always interested when I meet senior people from the SEO world as they often have a different take on things to us public relations types and I find it kind of refreshing to talk about the more geeky side of digital. I asked him how important he now felt social media was now on search. I told him that in the PR industry we have known for a long ...

Please excuse me if this is a bit of a rant but I felt the need to get it out of my system once and for all. You would have to have been hidden under an extremely large rock this week to miss the story about a twitter user revealing the details of celebrity super injunctions on Twitter. In fact, it even made the 10’o clock news last night and my first thought was why? Various people confirmed on Twitter last week the details of the married footballer – in ...

Happy New year to you all, last night was a bit stranger than normal, not just because my whole family are currently struggling with one of those nasty winter viruses but because we experienced an earthquake sat at home. It was just after 9pm and I was sat up watching something on TV when the whole house began to shake, the cupboards started to make rattling noises. It lasted for a about five seconds and felt like a huge train was driving past right under our house. As soon as we felt it we knew it was a tremor but we weren’t sure far it would have travelled, so I went onto my Facebook account and it was full ...

I was presenting at the Wealth Enhancement Forum last week on social media and the business opportunity it presents. I was asked several months back if I would do it and I said I would be happy to share my thoughts with the group. I managed to get about five slides into a presentation before the quick fire round started and the questions started to come thick and fast. I found it extremely interesting to hear this group of wealthy business owners talking about social networks and the varying ways in which they or their staff use them. I will be honest here and say that most of my clients tend to be marketing directors ...

I have been really busy recently, with this launch and that, but in my spare time I have been reading quite a lot on the ROI of social media and scratching my head. As more and more of these amazing buzz monitoring tools spring up out of the woodwork providing us with this set of data and that, it seems the big question is still what is the return on investment from social media? Sure data is all good and well but unless you have someone with half a brain who can process that data and tell you why this spike in conversation took place it’s pretty much useless – as useless as giving a caveman a microwave. ...

This weekend I really witnessed the power of Twitter and social media and it surprised me for the first time in a long time. On Saturday I was busy at home cutting the grass and doing my fatherly duties, when my mother turned up at our house with two beautiful and friendly dogs. She found them roaming the streets on one of Harrogate’s busiest roads. My mum had a good look around for the owners but couldn’t find anyone who knew who they belonged too and sadly they didn’t have any collars on either. So ...